Have fun, Mitch.
The certainty of a presidential veto be damned, say
various conservative leaders: Mitch McConnell must pass full Obamacare repeal by any means necessary.
"Republicans should use reconciliation to fully repeal ObamaCare," said Ken Cuccinelli, president of the Senate Conservatives Fund. "Voters know that nothing is a bigger threat to the budget and our economy than ObamaCare. Senator McConnell is on record saying that the law can be repealed with 51 votes and Republican voters expect him to keep his word."
Dan Holler, the communications director at Heritage Action, said "the most important" thing that Republicans could do in the majority would be to "use the reconciliation instructions to repeal ObamaCare."
McConnell suggested at a post-election press conference last week that Republicans could take advantage of reconciliation, but did not commit to using it for ObamaCare repeal.
The most important thing. Nothing matters more than stripping health insurance away from millions of people. Or at least trying to, since it will be vetoed by President Obama. McConnell knows that, which is why he's as of yet not committed to doing it. Because of that reality, some of the groups are tempering their demands, saying that McConnell should focus just on "its most onerous provisions," as the Koch brothers' FreedomWorks CEO Matt Kibbe says. By that he means big stuff like the individual mandate, just not the whole thing.
Even if McConnell's 51 senators pass a repeal under reconciliation, and the House passes it as well, there are "at least 27 points of order Republicans would need to change to clear the pathway for a reconciliation bill that would strip away ObamaCare." Senate rules require 60 votes to change those points of order. McConnell would have to be really committed to full-on repeal in order to blow up the Senate to get around existing rules, and then would still face a presidential veto.
But he's going to have his crazy caucus—with ranks now buttressed by new senators Joni Ernst, Tom Cotton, Thom Tillis, and Corey Gardner—to contend with. He's probably going to have new sympathy for House Speaker John Boehner now, and the Senate is going to be just as ridiculous as the House. The least productive Congress in history is about to get even worse.
